What is the purpose of linking service offering and catalog items?

[Suggy]

Question 1 - What are the benefits when I link the service offerings with catalog items? 

Is it only for reporting (how many offerings are consumed) or anything beyond that?

Question 2 - Here

I see some discussion regarding 1 SO <> N Catalog , 1SO <> 1 Catalog only etc

but its not clear on what is the final recommendation and the rationale behind that. Can anyone clarify?

[vignesh parthib]

Hi @Suggy 

Linking service offerings and catalog items in ServiceNow connects business-defined services with user request options, enabling better service tracking, SLA management, and reporting. It ensures catalog items are aligned with the organization's service portfolio.

For example, the catalog item "Request Laptop" can be linked to the service offering "Standard Laptop Provisioning" under the IT Hardware service.

Thanks & Regards,
vignesh parthiban

If my response helped, please mark it as the accepted solution so others can benefit as well.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Another really good reason to link a catalog item to a service offering is to identify the subscribers to the service offering - there are related lists that can show this data. In the event of issues with that service offering you can send targeted communications to subscribers instead of blanket notifications to (potentially) the whole organisation.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Suggy]

Hi @Mathew Hillyard Thanks for replying

1. Can I get more details on how the subscriptions should be handled? We are using user criteria today.

2. Is there any OOTB solution to send targeted communications to subscribers like on a click of a button or should we manually export the list of users, take their email IDs and send it.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Suggy 

1.) User Criteria controls visibility of the catalog item. Subscribers was historically to manage who has access to a catalog item but has a better use - to detail who has actually requested that catalog item (and are therefore a subscriber of the service offering). As you mention, user criteria now controls access. There are several subscriber related lists - at least users and groups from memory. The idea is that once the catalog item is requested and the req item is completed the request or is added to the list of subscriber users for the service offering. I don’t believe this is automatic and would need to be configured.

2.) Not to my knowledge - I could be mistaken but this is usually managed by a business rule on the table where conditions are met that creates an event and passes the subscribers, and a notification fired by the event to send targeted comms.

I hope this helps!

Mat